COVID-19 prevention means spending a little more time in our homes than usual. The comfort of those personal spaces is more important than ever. As a design and home publication, we’ve featured a number of cozy interiors. Here are a few of our favorites.
After a years-long renovation, a couple finds comfort and happiness in an elegant Second Empire row house
The décor that the couple assembled for this property is multifarious. There’s a sofa by Jonathan Adler here, a lamp by Philippe Starck there, plus vintage items purchased online and antique finds, including a chandelier discovered in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Some items, such as a coat rack made with antique hooks or the buffet table painted robin’s-egg blue, one owner created himself.
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A Lafayette Square homeowner is a master at mixing new and old, antique and modern
“The character of this neighborhood—that’s what drew me here,” says homeowner Steve Engel. “It was one of the few neighborhoods where I got invited to dinner parties just to meet the neighbors.
Take a peek inside the first home of 26-year-old influencer Samantha Eason
Light pours in through large bay windows in the dining room, where Eason talks comfortably, holding Maddox, 4 months, on her right hip. Her laptop isn’t far, just in case she gets an idea and needs to commit it to print before she forgets it. The room’s wooden table and modern chandelier, both from West Elm, were exciting purchases when the couple moved, given that everything they owned was either a hand-me-down or from their apartment. Above the table is the original coffered ceiling, which they painted white. “The wood was gorgeous but heavy,” explains Eason. The mantel is decorated with a collection of plants that Eason maintains by scheduling watering reminders into her smartphone.
Historic details meet contemporary style in a Claverach Park home
Painted all white, with gleaming new hardwood floors, the sunroom features a NanaWall system that allows two, four, or all six glass panels to open, making the space fully accessible to the deck. This area, complete with a wet bar, is where the Melanders love to entertain.
Designer Emily Hall pairs gilded antiques with modern lines in a family home that’s effortlessly chic
Emily Hall of Emily Hall Interiors has always considered her design aesthetic French, but a 2016 trip to Paris left her describing her style as “French on steroids.” Staying in Airbnbs with her now-husband, Sam, she observed how Parisians really live. “It’s so effortless and elegant, yet comfortable,” she says. “Nothing is too perfect, which in my mind makes it so.” Inspired by the juxtaposition of old and new, Hall began pairing Sam’s beloved modern and contemporary pieces with her preference for romance and antiques. “Blended together,” she says, “they create an unexpected style that’s inviting and sophisticated.”
The owner of Cool Stuff Period buys his dream home—a Mediterranean Revival that overlooks the Mississippi
Vinton wasn’t crazy about the previous owner’s attempts at interior design: “They tried to match the royal blue in the windows, and they loved to do accent walls.” On the fireplace mantel rests a Picasso. “I found that at an antique shop and reframed it,” he says. “I collect things with faces, so you’ll notice a lot of faces throughout the house.” Vinton is constantly switching out items to better fit his home. Right now he’s in the market for a longer coffee table to pair with the sofa, which, he says, “was designed by Arthur Elrod, a prominent designer in the ’60s. It came out of the Bond Estate in San Francisco and was featured in House & Garden’s 1974 Spring/Summer issue.”
Furniture and lighting double as art in the Creve Coeur home of Susan Bower and Stephen Leet
The master bedroom/studio is a large open space that was originally two separate rooms. A bed by German designer Konstantin Grcic “floats” in the middle of the room above an engineered cork floor.
The duo behind the Midcentury treasures at MoModerne create a cozy vintage haven in Crestwood
In the living room, a painting by Spanish abstract artist Miquel Ibarz pops against the perfectly preserved original wood paneling, one of Weiss’ and Kelley’s favorite features of the house. The couple had the long Midcentury sofa reupholstered in white Knoll fabric. The low marble coffee table is both stylish and durable—a useful attribute, because the couple has two children. “We don’t agree a lot when it comes to the house,” says Weiss, “so when we get things in that we agree on, they tend to stay for a while.” Weiss and Kelley often rotate new chairs from the shop into this space. Right now it’s occupied by a reupholstered Hans Wegner rocker and an Eames rocker with its original base and fiberglass shell. “I love rockers so much,” Weiss says. Floor-to-ceiling windows fill the room with light.
How one St. Louis couple combined seemingly disparate design elements to transform their home
“You’d better fly in for this one.” That’s what Tom and Brigette McMillin’s real estate agent told them back in 2006, as they were trying to relocate back to St. Louis. They’d suffered through months of weary house-hunting in a tight market, so they held their collective breath. But they were not disappointed: The first occupant of the 1939 Frontenac home, a finish carpenter, had lovingly handmade one-of-a-kind millwork and molding. There were stained glass windows, original crystal, and brass doorknobs, and French doors opening onto a covered porch. The house was unique, filled with details almost impossible to reproduce in the 21st century.
A reimagined Clayton cottage combines the best of old and new
In 1991, landscape designer Matt Moynihan moved into a little brick cottage in Clayton. Built in 1928 by a retired couple, it was basically “a three-room-per-floor house,” never meant to accommodate children. There were three bedrooms on the second floor: one for the husband and wife, one for guests, one for the maid. They shared one tiny bathroom—not as tiny as the first-floor powder room that had been built, oddly enough, next to the front door. But as a singleton new to the house, he kept things simple. When he first moved in, Moynihan remembers with a laugh, “I had a couch and a drawing table.”
Designer Laura Lee transforms her private residence
When interior designer Laura Lee and husband John Lee decided to purchase a home on Crestwood Drive in Clayton in 2008, they were drawn to its 1920s architecture and to the natural light, which defies the home’s Tudor roots.
Despite the great bones and the abundance of light, though, there was plenty that required Lee’s attention, most notably the kitchen and bathrooms, the wood floors, the awkward lighting scheme, and an addition from the 1980s whose structure was beginning to decay.
“Any time you remodel and you open up walls, you’re never 100 percent sure what you’re going to find,” she says.
The treasures of a well-traveled family find a home in this Richmond Heights residence
This Hampton Park beauty is called home by a couple, their two young children and college-age daughter, three large dogs, and the wife’s mother, who is from Mexico and lives with them part-time. A few years ago, when the couple was in the market for a new home, finding one large enough to accommodate them all was of paramount importance, but the house also needed to be big enough to allow the wife, a collector, to finally have her expansive art collection under one roof.
“I’ve been collecting for a long time, but nothing was ever in one place,” says the gallery owner. “I was just waiting for the right house.”
A couple transforms an old pole barn into a place that celebrates family and country
At first glance, Adrian Luchini’s country house, on 40 acres in Godfrey, looks like nothing more than an outbuilding on a modern farm. But once you enter through the steel door, you find that the interior is anything but ordinary. Built over an old pole barn, the house, with its wood roof, balloon frame, and vinyl siding on plywood, is primitive in character but contemporary in construction.
“From the outside, it looks like a new building, but on the inside, it’s the old barn,” says Adrian, the Raymond E. Maritz Professor of Architecture at Washington University. “The reason for this was to protect the old structure, which I thought was quite beautiful and full of history.”
Interior designer April Jensen’s Glendale farmhouse melds everything she loves
The first purchase for the living room was a bit expected, however. The minimalist gray sofa was similar to the tufted sofa in her mother’s house that Jenson had loved as a child. “But it sat in our living room, and you weren’t allowed on it unless you asked first,” she says, “so when I bought this sofa, I decided that I would use it every day.” It’s important to Jensen that her family and friends feel at ease. “There is not one thing about this house where I’m, like, ‘Oh, you can’t do that’ or ‘Don’t do that. Don’t sit that there,’” she says. Even the family’s three poodle mixes—Bon Bon, Bebe, and Winnie—feel comfortable roaming the house atop the original quarter-sawn, white-oak floors. Jensen also bought a marble-top Saarinen table for the living room, a set of side tables that she had refinished, and green-and-white cotton draperies from Highland Court that complement the view to the outside. Then, the designer says, she “happened to trip across these two chairs from Anthropologie.” She was drawn to the fabric, a vintage-inspired mix of yellow, jade green, and blue flowers. “To me, these colors are just so happy,” she says. “The chairs were really the impetus for the design of the house.”
Peek inside the home of fashion designer Anjali Kamra
“While I love traveling the globe,” says Kamra, “it’s lovely to come home to this house that my husband and I have put so much love and energy into making our own.”
